Christmas used to be my favorite day of the year. Not for the presents, but for the warmth.

The wood of my apartment door was solid oak, but the frame was fifty years old. Under Luke’s heavy fist, the entire structure trembled, sending flakes of dried white paint drifting down onto the welcome mat like miniature snowflakes.

“Aiden! Open the damn door! We know you’re in there! Your Civic is parked downstairs!”

I stood up from my desk. I didn’t rush. I walked into the hallway, clicked the deadbolt lock into place, and looked through the brass peephole.

Standing in the dimly lit, carpeted hallway of my building were three of them: Luke, Clara, and Aunt Sarah.

Sarah looked wild-eyed, her mascara smeared beneath her red-rimmed eyes, clutching a designer handbag that I had paid off on her birthday two years ago. Clara had her arms crossed over her puffy jacket, scowling at the floorboards, while Luke stood square in front of the door, his jaw set, his knuckles already bruised from hammering on the wood.

Across the hall, Apartment 4B cracked open. Mrs. Gable, an eighty-year-old widow who had lived in the building since the Carter administration, poked her silver head out.

“Excuse me!” Mrs. Gable snapped, her voice trembling with age and irritation. “What is going on out here? This is a private building! I am calling the superintendent!”

“Shut up, old lady!” Luke barked without even turning around. “Mind your own business! This is a family matter!”

That was the line.

I reached out, unlatched the chain, turned the deadbolt, and pulled the door open.

Luke nearly fell forward into my entryway. He caught himself on the door jamb, his face twisting into an aggressive sneer. “Oh, look who decided to show his face. You think you can just hide in here after what you did?”

I stood in the center of the doorway, my shoulders square, blocking the entrance completely. “Luke. Sarah. Clara. You have sixty seconds to get out of this building before I call the precinct.”

“You won’t call the police on us, Aiden,” Aunt Sarah hissed, pushing her way past Luke’s shoulder. She smelled of stale cigarettes and damp wool. “You listen to me, you ungrateful little wretch! My landlord gave me until five o’clock on Friday! If I am on the street, it is on your head! You have thousands of dollars sitting in this apartment! Give me what you owe me!”

“I don’t owe you a single penny, Sarah,” I said, my voice eerily calm against her hysteria. “My guarantor agreement expired two years ago. I checked with an attorney an hour ago. You’re on your own.”

Sarah’s face went pasty white. The entitlement drained out of her eyes, replaced by pure, naked desperation. “What? No... no, you can’t do that. You promised your father before he died that you’d look after the family!”

“My father died ten years ago, Sarah,” I answered, cold steel in my tone. “And he told me to look after the family, not feed a den of leeches who wouldn’t cross the street to spit on me if I was on fire.”

Clara stepped forward then, her eyes welling with theatrical tears. She pulled her hair behind her ears, using that wounded, little-sister expression that had worked on me since she was eight years old.

“Aiden... please,” she whimpered, reaching out to touch my forearm.

I pulled my arm back, out of her reach. Her hand hung in the empty air.

Her expression flickered with irritation before she forced the sad pout back on. “Aiden, the Best Buy manager wouldn’t take the laptop back because I already registered my Apple ID to the motherboard. He said it’s locked to my personal account. Barclays won’t cancel the transaction. Mom is sitting at home crying so hard she can barely breathe. If you file that fraud report, they’re going to arrest her! Is that what you want? You want Mom in handcuffs over a computer?”

“Then sell the computer, Clara,” I said.

Clara blinked, stunned. “What?”

“Sell the MacBook. Sell Luke’s phone. Use the cash to pay off the Barclays card before the first billing cycle hits. If the account is paid in full, the bank won’t pursue fraud charges, and Mom won’t go to jail. Simple.”

Luke let out an incredulous bark of laughter. “Sell my phone? Are you crazy? I already traded in my old one for a fifty-dollar store credit! What am I supposed to use?”

“A fifty-dollar prepaid burner from Walmart,” I said. “Just like the one I used for two years while I was paying off your transmission.”

Luke’s face flushed a deep, violent purple. He lunged forward, grabbing the collar of my sweater with both hands. “You think you’re better than us, don’t you? You sit in your fancy tech company, counting your money, looking down your nose at everybody! You think because you went to college you get to treat us like dirt? You’re going to give us those envelopes, Aiden, or I swear to God I will drag you down these stairs!”

I didn’t fight back. I didn’t pull his hands off me.

Instead, I looked past him, directly down the hallway where the elevator doors had just slid open.

David, my next-door neighbor, stepped out onto the carpet. David was a six-foot-four off-duty firefighter who had lived next to me for two years. He had his gym bag over one massive shoulder. He took one look at Luke clutching my sweater, dropped his bag with a heavy *thud*, and walked straight toward us.

“Hands off him,” David said, his voice a low, rumbling growl that filled the corridor. “Right now, little man.”

Luke froze. He looked at David’s size, then looked at David’s forearms, which were the size of Luke’s thighs. Slowly, Luke’s fingers unclenched from my collar. He stepped back, his chest heaving, trying to look intimidating while retreating behind his aunt.

“This is family business, pal,” Luke muttered weakly.

“I don’t give a damn whose business it is,” David said, stepping between Luke and my threshold. “You’re trespassing, you’re assaulting my neighbor, and you’re disturbing the peace. Building security is already downstairs with two cruisers from the fourth precinct. You’ve got about forty seconds before you’re riding down the elevator in zip-ties.”

Aunt Sarah let out a strangled shriek of terror. She grabbed Clara’s arm. “Come on. Clara, come on! We’re leaving!”

“Aiden!” Clara screamed, her mask slipping entirely now, her face contorting into ugly, raw hatred. “I hate you! Do you hear me? I wish you were never born! You’re not my brother! You’re nothing!”

“Get out,” I said softly.

David took half a step toward them, and that was all it took. Sarah dragged Clara toward the stairwell, their boots clattering wildly on the metal steps. Luke lingered for one final second, glaring at me with poison in his eyes.

“You’re going to regret this, Aiden,” Luke spat. “You have no family left. Nobody. You’re completely alone.”

“I’ve been alone for five years, Luke,” I told him. “I’m just now noticing the quiet.”

Luke turned and bolted down the stairs after the women.

The heavy metal fire door banged shut behind them, echoing through the stairwell like a gunshot.

David turned to me, crossing his arms. He looked at my crumpled sweater collar, then into my quiet apartment. “You alright, man?”

I took a deep, full breath. My hands weren’t shaking. My chest didn’t ache.

“Yeah,” I said, smoothing down the wool of my shirt. “Never better, Dave. Thanks.”

“Anytime,” he said, nodding toward my open door. “Hey, if you need somewhere to eat dinner tonight, my wife and I made enough roast beef for an army. Nobody should be eating takeout on Christmas.”

I looked at David. A stranger who lived across the hall, who asked for nothing, expected nothing, and stood up for me simply because it was the decent thing to do.